Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

CentOS and Red Hat are binary compatible.
I just switched Red Hat to CentOS, CAD software works as before.
I would run a squid proxy server to cache web pages/updates and reduce network traffic/resource demand on open software.
/gct

Jon Forrest wrote:

> On 5/24/2010 9:49 AM, Ken Tang wrote:
>
>
>>And yes, I am aware of alternatives like CentOS/Fedora/Ubuntu/MS-DOS
>>(just kidding), however, we have to use Red Hat because our CAD software
>>are only supported Red Hat. I have thought about using CentOS and
>>having a few Red Hat machines on standby so that we could test and call
>>for support, but my boss doesn't like this idea.
>
>
> For what it's worth, we use CentOS on some large
> clusters (e.g. ~600 cores) with absolutely no
> problems. In fact, all the clusters in the College
> of Chemistry use CentOS. We have never needed
> real RedHat and see no reason why we ever would.
>

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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

What Ken is saying is that some third-party vendors will only provide
support for their product if you run it on a licensed copy of RedHat.
Oracle has this policy, for example. So even though we all know they
are binary-compatible some people HAVE to run RedHat for that reason.

> CentOS and Red Hat are binary compatible.
> I just switched Red Hat to CentOS, CAD software works as before.
> I would run a squid proxy server to cache web pages/updates and reduce network traffic/resource demand on open software.
> /gct
>
> Jon Forrest wrote:
>
>> On 5/24/2010 9:49 AM, Ken Tang wrote:
>>
>>
>>> And yes, I am aware of alternatives like CentOS/Fedora/Ubuntu/MS-DOS
>>> (just kidding), however, we have to use Red Hat because our CAD software
>>> are only supported Red Hat. I have thought about using CentOS and
>>> having a few Red Hat machines on standby so that we could test and call
>>> for support, but my boss doesn't like this idea.
>>
>>
>> For what it's worth, we use CentOS on some large
>> clusters (e.g. ~600 cores) with absolutely no
>> problems. In fact, all the clusters in the College
>> of Chemistry use CentOS. We have never needed
>> real RedHat and see no reason why we ever would.
>>
>
>
>
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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

> I would run a squid proxy server to cache web pages/updates and
> reduce network traffic/resource demand on open software.

That's one way to do it. What I do is to keep a private
CentOS update mirror. I point the update clause in the
CentOS-Base.repo yum configuration files on all the
systems I manage to use that mirror.

Of course, it would be operationally more excellent if the
campus had central mirrors for the popular Linux distributions
and Mac OS, the way it does for Windows. I suspect this would
substantially reduce the amount of network traffic necessary
to keep Linux and Mac OS systems uptodate and secure.

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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

This is exactly the
issue we face in IST. It makes little sense negating the support on
your $100K+ database just to save $80 on the OS.

I, too, have been trying to get a better deal out of Red Hat of late.
One of the issues I am running into is a lack of good information on
the number of licenses we as a community already purchase. Red Hat has
not been very forthcoming when I request such information from them
directly. If possible, could the folks on this list please send me
totals on your Red Hat licenses? Please send them offline. I'll add
them up and let the list know what kind of total license count we have
as a community.

What Ken is saying is that some third-party vendors will only provide
support for their product if you run it on a licensed copy of RedHat.
Oracle has this policy, for example. So even though we all know they
are binary-compatible some people HAVE to run RedHat for that reason.
-rob
On 5/24/2010 2:51 PM, Ghaouar Camij Toschian
[hidden email] wrote:

CentOS and Red Hat are binary compatible.
I just switched Red Hat to CentOS, CAD software works as before.
I would run a squid proxy server to cache web pages/updates and reduce network traffic/resource demand on open software.
/gct
Jon Forrest wrote:

On 5/24/2010 9:49 AM, Ken Tang wrote:

And yes, I am aware of alternatives like CentOS/Fedora/Ubuntu/MS-DOS
(just kidding), however, we have to use Red Hat because our CAD software
are only supported Red Hat. I have thought about using CentOS and
having a few Red Hat machines on standby so that we could test and call
for support, but my boss doesn't like this idea.

For what it's worth, we use CentOS on some large
clusters (e.g. ~600 cores) with absolutely no
problems. In fact, all the clusters in the College
of Chemistry use CentOS. We have never needed
real RedHat and see no reason why we ever would.

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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

Paul Fisher wrote:
> On 05/24/2010 09:49 AM, Ken Tang wrote:
>> Our Red Hat license renewals are coming up. We get our Red Hat
>> licenses through DLT for $80 a machine. Does anybody know of
>> anywhere else where we can get Red Hat licenses for cheaper?
>
> The Academic Server Edition which contains only RHN updates (no
> support) should be available for $60 per server per year via DLT.

The several month long delay a couple of years ago was extreme, but it
is fairly common to have a month or more delay on security updates,
especially after a new minor version is released. (For instance, the
kernel security updates that RHEL had out on 30-Mar came out on 15-May
for CentOS.)

Depending on how many (and what) services are open to the network and
what sort of security you need based on the data on or accessible from
the machine the risk of extra weeks or months of known security
vulnerabilities may not be worth the $60/year savings.

Rune

> Paul
>
>
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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

1 possibility is renew it for 1 computer and have it act as a yum update proxy server
I would run the squid proxy server and have it cache the updates on 1 machine.
I would configure the others to use the proxy server for http and ftp access.
This way they should get the updates from the cache of the squid proxy server.
/gct

Rune Stromsness wrote:

> Paul Fisher wrote:
>
>>On 05/24/2010 09:49 AM, Ken Tang wrote:
>>
>>>Our Red Hat license renewals are coming up. We get our Red Hat
>>>licenses through DLT for $80 a machine. Does anybody know of
>>>anywhere else where we can get Red Hat licenses for cheaper?
>>
>>The Academic Server Edition which contains only RHN updates (no
>>support) should be available for $60 per server per year via DLT.
>
>
> Also available for $60 each directly from RedHat for purchases of under
> 40 quantity at:
> http://www.redhat.com/solutions/education/academic/>
> I've had faster and easier purchasing experiences going directly through
> RedHat instead of through DLT in the past.
>
>
>>Note that CentOS updates, by definition, lag Red Hat updates,
>>particularly when RHEL increments minor and major versions.
>
>
> The several month long delay a couple of years ago was extreme, but it
> is fairly common to have a month or more delay on security updates,
> especially after a new minor version is released. (For instance, the
> kernel security updates that RHEL had out on 30-Mar came out on 15-May
> for CentOS.)
>
> Depending on how many (and what) services are open to the network and
> what sort of security you need based on the data on or accessible from
> the machine the risk of extra weeks or months of known security
> vulnerabilities may not be worth the $60/year savings.
>
> Rune
>
>
>>Paul
>>
>>
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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

On 5/25/2010 9:58 AM, Ghaouar Camij Toschian wrote:
> 1 possibility is renew it for 1 computer and have it act as a yum
> update proxy server I would run the squid proxy server and have it
> cache the updates on 1 machine. I would configure the others to use
> the proxy server for http and ftp access. This way they should get
> the updates from the cache of the squid proxy server.

Again, I don't think it's necessary to run squid to do this.
If you can get the updates from RedHat and put them
in a directory somewhere, you can then make them available
to all your other machines by running an http server
on the machine with the updates. I use thttpd for
this.

I just recently updated all my CentOS 5.4 machines
to CentOS 5.5 by using this method. It worked great!

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Re: [Micronet] Cheapest Red Hat licenses we can get

You could also set up the other machines to synchronize their package
directories with the local master copy using rsync over an ssh connection,
and then you don't even need to run an HTTP server. I've used a similar
setup for years (to synchronize entire system images, actually) on the
FreeBSD servers I maintain for various side projects. If you set up a
good "excludes" file for rsync, and are careful about not updating
filesystem images of running processes, you can even just do all your
software/OS updates on your master copy and distribute the changes to the
other machines directly, without having to run the actual updates on each
server.

-Bill Clark

> On 5/25/2010 9:58 AM, Ghaouar Camij Toschian wrote:
>> 1 possibility is renew it for 1 computer and have it act as a yum
>> update proxy server I would run the squid proxy server and have it
>> cache the updates on 1 machine. I would configure the others to use
>> the proxy server for http and ftp access. This way they should get
>> the updates from the cache of the squid proxy server.
>
> Again, I don't think it's necessary to run squid to do this.
> If you can get the updates from RedHat and put them
> in a directory somewhere, you can then make them available
> to all your other machines by running an http server
> on the machine with the updates. I use thttpd for
> this.
>
> I just recently updated all my CentOS 5.4 machines
> to CentOS 5.5 by using this method. It worked great!
>
> --
> Jon Forrest
> Research Computing Support
> College of Chemistry
> 173 Tan Hall
> University of California Berkeley
> Berkeley, CA
> 94720-1460
> 510-643-1032
> [hidden email]>
>
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